Great Idea! If you live in an area that can support wind turbines, which a lot of us don't, a matching grant from the Fed would be a great incentive, I go further and say there should be a 50/50 grant program for every dollar a homeowner or business spends on green power, be it biomass, geothermal, solar, or yes, wind! If the Fed ponied up half the cost directly to the manufacturer or the homeowner for the purchase and installation, homes all across America could benefit from this burgeoning and vital technology. Not only would that in turn create jobs, it would benefit the environment too, so it's a win-win for everyone!

Please note that many towns have ordinances in place that prohibit wind generators, often under hight limits, etc. Check your town regulations and get them changed to favor energy self suficiency!

The problem is that many sites that are good for people to live are not good for wind power generation (see the wind resource map here).  The height of the wind turbine you would need to overcome the problems with many residential sites (trees, surrounding homes, insufficient sustained windspeed even at the best of times) would make this type of power generation prohibitively expensive.  For that matter, if everybody did this, your neighbor's turbine would most likely be blocking the wind from yours.

Also, remember that it's not just a matter of (1) installing a turbine, and (2) plugging it in -- you need a battery and inverter system to store the energy you collect and turn it into usable electricity.  Household-scale devices like this induce significant losses.

I think dumping more money into placing lots of wind turbines where they would do best and using large scale equipment to send the energy out into the grid.  Otherwise, we'd just be sinking money into installing small, inefficient turbines in marginal wind energy sites.

In reality less than 1% of single family homes would do this.  And when you do them individually they are so expensive.  It's like buying little mini candy bars individually for 25 cents when you could but a whole bag of them for 50 cents at wal mart.